PC shooter Space Pirates and Zombies is unique and ambitious (Update)

SPAZ quite literally shoots for the stars with its creative game design. …

Update: We were contacted by Andrew Hume of MinMax Games, who insisted that the technical problems we experienced with the game could due to issues with our connection to Steam, and were not particular to Space Pirates and Zombies. He shared his sales numbers and complaint reports as evidence, and others have said similar things about our coverage of this game. For now, we've removed the offending portion from the headline, and we'll be doing some extensive testing tomorrow. If the issue was truly with Steam or our connection, we'll both update this post and run a new one with the information.

Space Pirates and Zombies is certainly one of the most ambitious PC indie releases to emerge this year. Developed by Minmax Games, which is composed of two gentlemen and the contents of their pockets, S.P.A.Z. is the definition of a labor of love. It combines multiple genres and ideas, creating an amalgamation of twin-stick shooters, RPGs, and space exploration. It's a wonderful title, but it's marred by some technical issues.

The game begins with some lengthy introductory narration, setting up the many intricacies of its plot. A ton of information is thrown at you, but once proper gameplay begins, players will quickly realize the game is lighthearted and quirky. While the writing tends to fall flat with some of its jokes, making the character interactions feel a little awkward at times, the gameplay more than makes up for the stilted writing.

Space Pirates and Zombies gameplay trailer.

Space Pirates and Zombies initially feels like a twin-joystick shooter, like the popular Geometry Wars, but adapted to PC controls. Spacecrafts utilize boosters from all four sides of the ship via the WASD keys. The mouse operates an aiming reticule, allowing your craft to quickly turn and fire independently of your boosters. It can be disorienting at first, but this control method makes ship-to-ship combat engaging and wild. Battles are tense affairs, requiring quick reflexes and adequate weapons to survive.

There are some issues here, though, stemming from the sandbox nature of the game. Players can stumble into confrontations with enemy fleets three times their size with very little warning. Once you clear the hour-long tutorial, you have free reign in the universe and you immediately understand the massive size of the game. I started with all of the default settings in difficulty and universe size, and I was impressed by how many star systems and galaxies existed to explore. Within each sector lies numerous quests and missions to undertake, awarding Rez (the game's currency) and experience points for leveling up your fleet. The game doesn't ramp up quite as smoothly as I would have liked, leading to some instances of grinding experience before moving on to the next area.

S.P.A.Z. also features a rather prominent mineral-mining system. Building ships and buying new parts all cost Rez, which can be obtained from mining asteroids and the occasional destroyed enemy vessel. Striking a balance between purchasing upgrades and keeping enough Rez in your bank can be difficult, as replacing lost spacecraft in the midst of an epic battle can become costly. Once you run out of Rez, it's back to the grind to rebuild your bank account. The game's difficulty is unflinching and can lead to tedium if you don't manage your fleet well.

Space battles can be overwhelmingly intense.

The most frustrating part of my time with Space Pirates and Zombies, however, were the hours spent simply trying to launch the game. After my first two-hour session, the game refused to load again through Steam, instead hanging on the "Preparing to launch..." dialog box. According to the Internet, I'm not the only person to experience difficulties with the game over Steam, either. After attempting numerous fixes listed on various forums, I was finally successful in relaunching, only to discover that my prior saved game no longer existed. Thankfully the long tutorial can be skipped and I was able to retrace my steps rather quickly.

It may sound like I've had a completely negative experience with the game so far, but that's not the case. This indie strategy-RPG-shooter has a lot to offer and does an admirable job at fusing a variety of popular genres together in a cohesive manner. It's simply that the game's bugs and shortcomings really stand out against its incredibly impressive and ambitious design. I've heard mention of some gamers taking over thirty hours to complete S.P.A.Z.'s default campaign, which is an incredible value for its meager $15 price tag. I would suggest that everyone should at the very least try the demo and experience it for yourself.

After my first two-hour session, the game refused to load again through Steam, instead hanging on the "Preparing to launch..." dialog box.

If this was yesterday, Steam was having content server issues. I can only assume it had something to do with Deus Ex's release, plus Valve gearing up for Team Fortress's Birthday event in Team Fortress 2 (which resulted in a larger than normal patch).

I picked it up, but I haven't gotten deep in the game yet. I'm still at the "What do I do" stage. I've mined a fair amount, and I'm doing simple quests, but I still don't have a firm grasp on blueprints, black market, zombies, faction relationships, etc.

I can see I have a tremendous amount of progression to go, but I'm past the tutorial handholding, but not to the point I can run in the game. I'm at the awkward crawl stage, where I can move on my own, but have no idea where I'm going.

I got it way back in beta and enjoyed it quite a bit. I recently moved it from Impulse to Steam and that went smoothly as well. I liked the humor and there were some parts of it that threw me back into some of the fun things we had back in 8-bit times, even (I'm sure it was intentional, some of the cut scenes).

The only time you'll be stuck in a fight with a fleet as big as described is if you knowingly go to a system and planet with a faction that doesn't like you.

How many and how powerful you'll encounter on average depends on the strength of the system. Take note of the system map statistic:UTA Strength X / 3CIV Strength X / 3

Where 0 is minimally armed, and 3 is heavily armed. This affects how many ships of that faction you encounter on any given mission, and how powerful their Starbase is. You can undergo missions that can increase or decrease the strength of any given faction. Destroying their Starbase will completely collapse the strength of that faction as well, causing it to reset back to 0 / 3(you can do more missions to increase it).

The difficulty is not that bad if you make it a point to grind out a little bit and pursue weapon upgrade blueprints as soon as possible. Luckily I received the next cannon hard point upgrade fairly early in the game so I had an immediate edge that has persisted throughout my playthrough and actually made the game somewhat easy, but your mileage may vary.

Edit: I should also point out that I have had no problems running this game at any point. Though I didn't play it yesterday, so if it was the aforementioned content server issues, I wasn't around to experience them(too busy playing Deus Ex, cough cough).

Instead of discussing the game, let's argue about linguistic semantics.

OK!

It turns out that there is only one logical answer.

While specified aspects of a game may be potentially unique and/or ambitious, they cannot be experienced if that game does not actually work. They have no effect or in other words are inconsequential.

The non-functioning of a game is therefore an overriding factor as to its uniqueness and ambitiousness. I trust we can all agree that a non-functional game is neither unique nor ambitious in its lack of functioning. Therefore, the non-functioning of a game is in fact mutually exclusive with uniqueness and ambition.

The non-functioning of a game is therefore an overriding factor as to its uniqueness and ambitiousness. I trust we can all agree that a non-functional game is neither unique nor ambitious in its lack of functioning. Therefore, the non-functioning of a game is in fact mutually exclusive with uniqueness and ambition.

I don't know, Ubisoft has done quite a good job in demonstrating that lack of functionality is a perfectly ambitious endeavour. While also demonstrating new and unique ways of going about applying it to their customers.

Instead of discussing the game, let's argue about linguistic semantics.

OK!

It turns out that there is only one logical answer.

While specified aspects of a game may be potentially unique and/or ambitious, they cannot be experienced if that game does not actually work. They have no effect or in other words are inconsequential.

The non-functioning of a game is therefore an overriding factor as to its uniqueness and ambitiousness. I trust we can all agree that a non-functional game is neither unique nor ambitious in its lack of functioning. Therefore, the non-functioning of a game is in fact mutually exclusive with uniqueness and ambition.

I would go so far as to say this is a malfunctioning game rather than non-functioning due to the fact that at one point it did actually function.

When the game did function it was both unique and ambitious. It should still remain that way despite being malfunctioning. However, if it never could function in the first place, then I would defer to your argument.

After my first two-hour session, the game refused to load again through Steam, instead hanging on the "Preparing to launch..." dialog box.

If this was yesterday, Steam was having content server issues. I can only assume it had something to do with Deus Ex's release, plus Valve gearing up for Team Fortress's Birthday event in Team Fortress 2 (which resulted in a larger than normal patch).

SPAZ was the only game I had this problem with. Every other game launched fine. That's why I'm inclined to believe that it was something on the game's side of things. I could be mistaken, but as I pointed out, others have experienced problems as well.

I would suggest renaming the article. It makes is sound as though the game itself if full of bugs and/or crashes. The start up issue could have easily been a server issue or any number of things, not to say it's not a game issue. The comments further justify my suggestion.Just a thought.

Played the demo when this was in beta, found myself scouring every inch of the demo's limited game space for enemies and upgrades and rez, and realized that if I was sucking the marrow out of the demo, I should pony up for the game. Bought the game, manually carried over my demo save file, and... kaput. Turns out the demo save file (at least in Beta) did not play nice with the full game. Started a new game, blasted through the opening mission space, and out into the universe! Hours, and hours, and days later, broken mission. Turns out that there was a funny bug where just the act of bringing in a saved game from the beta resulted in corrupted saves from new games. The lovely gents at MinMax actually managed to save my corrupted save, and I went merrily on my way.

Because I'm mildly OC, I never really had to grind, because by the time I got to the big gates, I was probably 7-8 levels above the locals from scouring every outlying system for upgrades, rez, and goons. Since I got to the 3rd stage of the game, I've been a little disheartened, just because I haven't found a build that I like for dealing with the new enemy type, and also because I've unlocked all of the ship hulls. I want bigger ships!! Giant ships!! HUMONGO SHIPS!! There's less new-shiny for me to be compulsive about, so I ran out of steam. But man, I poured many wonderful hours into this game. And someday, I will go back and finish it, just like Deus Ex, and Far Cry 2, and... and...

I tried the demo and I have to say, for an arcade type game, it was just a bit tedious for me. It's not what it looks like, that's for sure. I thought it would be an easy to pick-up and play for 10 min type game. Wrong, it took 10 minutes just to get oriented in the game. Controls are a bit wonky too. I'm sure it could appeal to a lot of people, but my take was that it was too tedious to choose over the other games I'm playing. I recommend playing the demo beforehand.

This game sounds cool too, though I'm not sure how hectic the piloting of multiple ships in your fleet might get.

RE: Multiple ships

You have a tactical/pause screen that you can pull up; from there, tell your wingmen who to attack, where to go, what to do; un-pause, wingmen carry out orders pretty reliably, you continue flying your main ship. The ability to pause and reflect prevents the hectic-ity from being too high, even if the live furballs themselves can be a little wild.

The only times I found myself in direct control of my wing-men were when my main ship went down, or when I needed to be completing multiple objectives in disparate corners of the region in quick succession. In those cases, drop out of lightspeed, send my ships off to the different objectives, and then swap control from one to the other as I finished the fine-motor-skill work at each piece.

I tried the demo and I have to say, for an arcade type game, it was just a bit tedious for me. It's not what it looks like, that's for sure. I thought it would be an easy to pick-up and play for 10 min type game. Wrong, it took 10 minutes just to get oriented in the game. Controls are a bit wonky too. I'm sure it could appeal to a lot of people, but my take was that it was too tedious to choose over the other games I'm playing. I recommend playing the demo beforehand.

I agree with the 10 min playtime but I don't quite agree with the controls. It seems to be pretty much inline with other games of this type. WASD for movement and mouse for shooting. I admit it does get a little weird when ship is facing downwards when left and right thrust gets reversed though.

I loved Escape Velocity! Used to play it with my friends on the old Macs- I wonder if this is for Mac...Damn that shuttle sucked!

I checked the comments hoping to find others that remember Escape Velocity. This game immediately makes me nostalgic over EV for the Mac (EV Nova for Windows was good, too). The Kestrel was a great ship :-)

The non-functioning of a game is therefore an overriding factor as to its uniqueness and ambitiousness. I trust we can all agree that a non-functional game is neither unique nor ambitious in its lack of functioning. Therefore, the non-functioning of a game is in fact mutually exclusive with uniqueness and ambition.

I don't know, Ubisoft has done quite a good job in demonstrating that lack of functionality is a perfectly ambitious endeavour. While also demonstrating new and unique ways of going about applying it to their customers.

After my first two-hour session, the game refused to load again through Steam, instead hanging on the "Preparing to launch..." dialog box.

If this was yesterday, Steam was having content server issues. I can only assume it had something to do with Deus Ex's release, plus Valve gearing up for Team Fortress's Birthday event in Team Fortress 2 (which resulted in a larger than normal patch).

SPAZ was the only game I had this problem with. Every other game launched fine. That's why I'm inclined to believe that it was something on the game's side of things. I could be mistaken, but as I pointed out, others have experienced problems as well.

The visual similarities to EV are obvious, but it's far more combat focused. There there's no commodity trading, new ships you get by blowing up ships to reverse engineer plans, and the missions are much more simple.

The visual similarities to EV are obvious, but it's far more combat focused. There there's no commodity trading, new ships you get by blowing up ships to reverse engineer plans, and the missions are much more simple.

I'm a couple hours into SPAZ and this is my main complaint, but I can't really get mad at 2 guys for failing to build another EV. I imagine making SPAZ have a greater focus on economy (and more purchasable weaponry) would've made it highly difficult to balance. Overall I'm happy to support indie devs for this kind of work.

I got SPAZ like a week ago. I have a couple dozen hours racked up so far. Personally, I have had absolutely zero technical issues. I like the game. It perhaps isn't the deepest of games, but it is entertaining and fun. This is a good solid open world game with some entertaining combat. Ship customization strikes a nice balance between being able to pick a style and tweak the ship to fit, and being forced to select the wall paper and paneling.

Considering the amount of time I have burned so far and the fact that I have been completely entertained the entire time... it was well worth the $15. If this flavor of game tickles your fancy at all, this is a solid buy.

The visual similarities to EV are obvious, but it's far more combat focused. There there's no commodity trading, new ships you get by blowing up ships to reverse engineer plans, and the missions are much more simple.

When I saw the post saying it was like an updated EV, I was happy, and determined to go get it when I went home. Then I saw this. More simple than EV? Without the trading or missions, this sounds like a basic shoot-em-up, and just not that interesting. Does it at least have a forklift? I'll give the demo a try, but it needs to spectacular.

Regarding the title of the article I think you do the game a disservice by holding one issue against it so boldly. If you had more then one problem preventing you from playing I would agree with the wording, but one issue that may have something to do with UAC and where you installed the game shouldn't ding it that hard.

Also I've not encountered the steep learning curve you have. I've been playing it for about fifteen hours and only once or twice did I find myself so outgunned that emergency retreat wasn't an option.

"I've heard mention of some gamers taking over thirty hours to complete S.P.A.Z.'s default campaign, which is an incredible value for its meager $15 price tag."

While I see it frequently, I find it hard to understand this attitude. I do not measure the value of a game in how long it takes me to complete it, but rather in how much fun it was and how memorable it was. I would much rather pay for a game that I can play through in 3 hours but that provides an amazing 3 hours than for one that provides 60 moderately entertaining hours that are filled with tedium.

I always think of Enslaved: Odessey to the West as an example of this. It was a relatively short game, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.